Then the wind found it. Just two miles east at Hoʻokipa, the relentless trade winds and reef break combine into some of the most consistent windsurfing conditions on earth, and through the 1980s and 1990s the pioneers of the sport set up shop in town and made Pāʻia known the world over as the "Windsurfing Capital of the World." The same winds now draw kitesurfers and foilers too. The giant winter wave at Jaws (Peʻahi) lies just beyond, and green sea turtles haul out to rest on the sand at Hoʻokipa — watched, by law, from a respectful distance. And all the while Pāʻia kept its oldest job: the last town to gas up, grab food and turn east onto the 64-mile Road to Hāna.
That culture was a blend. The plantation camps gathered families from across the Pacific, each adding its food, faith and festivals to the mix that still flavors Pāʻia today. In 1906 the community raised the seaside Mantokuji Soto Zen Mission, a Buddhist temple whose summer Bon Dance still lights the shore each year. Up and down Baldwin Avenue, the false-front wooden storefronts of the plantation era went up — the same buildings, weathered and repainted, that give the town its look a century later.
Why People Visit Pāʻia
Pāʻia offers a whole mood in one small town: bohemian, barefoot charm, world-class wind and surf, and the romance of the open road to Hāna. It is the coolest little town on Maui — and for the artists, surfers and free spirits who live here, simply home, the place where old Maui still feels like itself.
